..if you're into that whole phony time-construct of "months" and "years".

We are on our way out to dinner at our favorite restaurant in San Diego and will return tomorrow (the use of "tomorrow" - based on the assumption, of course, that you also believe in the whole artificial concept of "days" and "the passage of time").

Mel Gibbs: “The Patriot Act will put both of you (Al Neuharth and Greg Mitchell) on trial for treason and convict and execute both of you as traitors for running these stories in a time of war and it should be done on TV for other communist traitors like you two to know we mean business. This is war and you should be put in prison NOW for talking like this. Who the hell do you people think you are? You give aid and comfort to our enemies and aid them in murdering our proud soldiers. You people are a disgrace to America. Your families should be put in prison with you, then be made to leave and move to the Middle East ...You two guys are evil bastards…This is a great Christian nation and god wants us to lead the world out of darkness with great leaders like President George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Communists like Al and Greg will soon be in prison and on death row for your ugly papers. We won the election and now you are mad. We own America and all the rights, you people are trash, go back to Russia and Africa and take your friends with before we put you on death row after a fair trial.”

You know, if this is the middle that Peter Beinart wants us to move towards, I think I'll pass. At least without some tongs and rubber gloves and maybe some bug spray.

Put down the controller, turn off the TV, and go outside and say something. And clean up your room!

It looks like Laura finally put her foot down and made President XBox turn off Grand Theft Auto: Sadr City and go out and face the world...four days later.

President Bush said Wednesday said that the $35 million in aid pledged by the United States to aid victims of the earthquake-spawned tsunamis that battered southern Asia is "only the beginning" and announced the formation of an international coalition to coordinate relief efforts.

Saying that he and his wife, Laura, were “saddened by the terrible loss of life” in the disaster, Bush pledged a multifaceted response from the United States that goes far beyond the $35 million initially pledged.

[...]

The news conference was Bush’s first public statement since the tsunami struck on Sunday, and came after critics faulted the president for not interrupting his vacation at his Crawford ranch to talk in person about the disaster.

He had previously issued several statements expressing his condolences and promising to help the affected nations.

You would think that these people could just hold their horses until his vacation is over. I mean, he's got all that brush to clear, when all they've got is this.

Jeebus. Apparently the mainstream media (MSM to the mouthbreathers) is doing it all wrong by, you know, reporting stuff. The latest outrage according to the 101st Fighting Keyboarders:

Does it not seem reasonable to expect that revealing the identities of Navy SEALs engaged in clandestine operations could have profound negative consequences? WTF? I blogged on this outrageous reporting at the time, but I expected the guys to just sit there and wallow in the mud being slung at them from the MSM. I guess things have changed somewhere along the line, because now six Navy SEALs and two of their wives have filed a lawsuit against the Associated Press. The plaintiffs are not surprisingly unnamed because their lives and those of their families are in real danger if their true identities were ever discovered by AQ cells located in the US. It’s not like Joe Army Guy who can go on CNN and wish his wife and kids Merry Christmas in uniform. There’s really no telling if Joe is a tank driver or a truck driver. Navy SEALs to a man are ALL up to their necks in taking out leadership targets in the Iraqi insurgency and AQ. If one of those guy’s names are revealed, particularly in association with a media driven “war crimes” frenzy, then their safety at home is in real jeopardy if not from AQ, then from some nutbag islamofascist sympathizer in San Diego or Virginia. It’s not like SEALs are authorized to carry concealed weapons in the US like a law enforcement officer. Some moonbat with a gun could do a drive-by on their house.

Which happens so often it's like a crimewave that requires the Frogman Signal over Gotham City.

To recap: where did the AP get these incriminating photos? The Internets.

Preliminary findings of a military inquiry suggest that some of the recently published photographs of Navy special forces capturing detainees in Iraq were taken for legitimate intelligence-gathering purposes and showed commandos using approved procedures, a Navy spokesman said.

The photos, which have drawn a strong reaction in Arab media, also appear to show Navy SEALs sitting or lying on top of hooded and handcuffed detainees in the back of a pickup truck.

Citing the ongoing investigation, a spokesman for the Naval Special Warfare Command in Coronado on Monday declined comment on the pickup truck pictures, which were among 40 images of detainees an Associated Press reporter found on a commercial photo-sharing Web site posted by a woman who said her husband brought them from Iraq. (my emphasis)

So now the frogmen and a couple of their wives (including, we assume, the braintrust who decided to share hubby's "Here's me kicking a wogs face in." photos with...apparently the whole world) have decided to sue:

Six Navy SEALs and two of their wives filed a lawsuit against The Associated Press and one of its reporters today for allegedly revealing their identities in photos published in early December, according to a press release from the plaintiffs.

The complaint, filed in California Superior Court, alleges that AP reporter Seth Hettena obtained a photograph in a personal Web site maintained by one of the wives of the Navy SEALs, which contains personal photographs.

None of the plaintiffs are named in the lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by E&P. They are represented by attorney James W. Huston of San Diego.

Hettena allegedly removed photos from that site and published them on December 4, 2004, in a story stating that the pictures "could be" the earliest evidence of possible prisoner abuse in Iraq, the plaintiffs contend. The SEALs argue that the pictures "actually depict special warfare operators' standard procedures during covert operations. The Iraqis shown being captured in the photographs were leaders of anti-coalition attacks and Saddam loyalists." ("removed" them from the site? Wha?)

You hadn't heard? Well, I'm not breaking news, President Bush knows damn well that UBL has been dead for quite some time. But why would Bush keep it to himself? If he were to disclose his knowledge that UBL is dead he would blow John Kerry's doors off in the election, and yet he remains silent. Why?

Maybe you're wondering how I know he's dead. Perhaps one of my SEAL buddies let me in on the secret? NO. I know because a publicity whore and grandstanding scumbag like UBL could not possibly resist the multitude of opportunites to inspire his cult members.

It looks like the Pentagon, which expanded upon the concept of "destroying a village in order to save it" during the Viet Nam war (if you don't remember that war, you're in luck. The sequel is playing at an AMC Cinema Iraq multiplex near you) have decided to bring it all back home:

The Defense Department, which controls 28 million acres of land across the nation that it uses for combat exercises and weapons testing, has been moving on a variety of fronts to reduce requirements that it safeguard the environment on that land.

In Congress, the Pentagon has won exemptions in the last two years from parts of the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. It has sought in recent years to exempt military activities, for three years, from compliance with parts of the Clean Air Act.

Also, the Pentagon, which controls about 140 of the 1,240 toxic Superfund sites around the country, is seeking partial exemptions from two laws governing toxic waste. And two months ago, it drafted revisions to a 1996 directive built on a pledge "to display environmental security leadership within Department of Defense activities worldwide."

[...]

It has spent more than $25 billion since 1985 on a program to clean up active and closed military bases, but at the same time has continued to generate pollution. Toxic residues like perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel, have been found in the Colorado River and in ground water in some states.

In addition, the Congressional appropriations for cleanups under the department's environmental restoration program, which usually hew to the department's budget requests, have been largely unchanged in recent years but slightly lower overall than in the Clinton administration, even as estimates for cleanups at closed military bases have far exceeded current spending.

The 1996 directive was produced under the Clinton administration, at a time of heightened concern over environmental issues. It was unclear when the revised draft directive might go into effect.

But the copy made available on the Web site of an environmental group made it clear that it represented a fundamentally different philosophy. Kyla Bennett, leader of the New England chapter of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which released the directive, said the draft policy "says, 'We'll do whatever we have to do under the cloak of readiness and national security.' " Ms. Bennett added, "It's discouraging to me that the Department of Defense uses the terrorist attacks as a cloak to excuse themselves from environmental laws."

It's a good thing that the rest of the administration hasn't gotten around to using 9/11 to as a cover to....

Luke 1:30-32 And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall----!!!

We skipped last weeks AWM because...well, we were just lazy. Sue us. So here's a recap:

Last week Meghan used the fragility of Christmas ornaments to remind the kids (Björk, Antipasta, Glossodynia, and Muskrat) that nothing is permanent, all things fall apart, and we're all going to die someday:

There’s nothing so well calculated to cheer up a bunch of gloomsters than unpacking old ornaments — with the annual rediscovery of “the elephant!” and “George Washington!” and “the cat with the fish!” — and so it proved again until amidst the boxes and tissue paper Violet came across a purple-painted sparkly clay heart she had made last winter at nursery school, and which had broken within minutes of arriving home. Immediately she curled up around this sacred object on the sofa, and it was only from a spreading damp patch that I realized she was crying.

This, in parenting lingo, is what’s known as a Teaching Moment.

“Children,” I announced, “I have something for you.” I opened a box and showed them four new blown-glass heart-shaped ornaments, each beautiful and each different. I resisted the cornball impulse to tell them the ornaments were “each different and each beautiful, like each of you,” but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to deliver the whole evanescence-of-material-goods message.

“These beautiful things are fragile,” I told them. “Like Violet’s sparkly heart, they will break. If not this year, maybe next. We should enjoy them while they last, but remember, they are just things. Do you understand?”

Four solemn faces looked at me.

“Things always break eventually. What doesn’t break is love. Love is the only real thing; everything else is just stuff. Do you see?”

Four heads nodded. I wondered if I would remember this little homily the next time someone smeared peanut butter on my dry-clean-onlies, and sighed.

Now, I'm no expert on foreshadowing, but I think Meghan is trying to tell the kids that Daddy is going to be moving away for awhile while he and Mummy try to sort some things out and that doesn't mean that Daddy doesn't love them he just needs some time to himself. Oh, and the person that Daddy is going to be living with isn't going to be their new Mummy even if they do sleep in the same room. They should just call him Uncle Phil...and not mention anything about him and Daddy at school.

Which leads us to this week where Meghan explains that she can't find anything to get for her kids for Chistmas since they already have every toy that no normal kid would ever want:

Except in the most blighted households, American children have all the food they need, all the clothes they need, all the pens, pencils, and drawing paper. Even in the most blighted households, American children have DVD players.

At our house, actually, there is no DVD player yet — we can scarcely manage electronics for ourselves, let alone the children, and not because of money but because I personally cannot bear to read instruction manuals — but our children do have Scrabble, Parcheesi, Monopoly, Battleship, and Diplomacy, plus two editions of Pretty Pretty Princess. We have innumerable picture books, novels, dolls, blocks, trains, princess and soldier figurines, dress-ups, pogo sticks, jump ropes, scooters, Legos, and pretty much everything an old-fashioned child could want, including shiny new bicycles that were supposed to be Molly and Paris's Christmas presents, but which we gave them a month early because the weather was so beautifully warm. We could have deferred this particular gratification for the sake of suspense, I suppose, but then the children wouldn't have been able to use the things until spring, and what's the good of that?

In short, contemplating the empty acreage under the Christmas tree, I was struck this year by the awful fact that there isn't anything we could give the two eldest that would yield more than marginal pleasure.

Now, this isn't to say that the older kids, Antipasta and Muskrat, didn't give her some kind of clue:

Oh, when pressed, any child can come up with a list. Three quarters of mine were able to do it nimbly enough when I asked them to write a note to Santa Claus. Almost-five Violet asked courteously for "a princess castle." Three-year-old Phoebe immediately grabbed my sleeve and requested "a princess castle." Paris, who is eight, carefully printed out: life size robot, surfboard, and gun.

By contrast, ten-year-old Molly bit her pencil eraser and looked vague. Eventually she scribbled a bit and looked up. "My New and Improved Christmas List, in Order of Desire," she read. "Set of watercolor paints with art pad, money (up to you how much), wallet, clothes (always an option), candy."

So we see that young Muskrat is bent on becoming some kind of gun totin'-world dominating-surf dude with a killer robot named Columbine, while ten-year-old Antipasta's list indicates that she is just seven cats (each named after a child she will never have) away from becoming Kathryn Jean Lopez. But Meghan, as usual, is too busy reminiscing about her Hemingway years (whoops...wrong one) to catch the subtle signs:

"Of course!" I yelped, when I saw Susan's entry in NRO's November Gift-Giving Guide. "Rats! I was going to do that years ago!"

Twelve years ago, to be exact. I was then a foreign correspondent, and before Christmas I spent a desperate day trawling the airport in Nairobi trying to find someone who could fly me into Somalia, where the U.S. Marines had lately landed and into which no commercial flights dared venture. I began bearding every man in epaulets, then every white man in epaulets, and eventually every white man, looking for a pilot.

Of course, Meghan didn't get to Somalia, which is why Black Hawk Down happened which is, of course, why 9/11 happened...but Meghan doesn't mention that because it would totally bring down her Christmas column.

Instead, Meghan goes on and on about something called Heifer International which, I suppose, since she was talking about being a "journalist", has something to do with Candy Crowley, but I could be wrong about that.

Anyway, Meghan puts up a brave front and doesn't mention Mr. Meghan, so I assume that he is having Christmas...elsewhere.

A delighted Laura Bush shows off the African-American children that the President purchased for her through amazon.com. According to the President the children are named (from left to right) Clarence, Condi, Condi, Condi, Condi, Clarence, Clarence, Clarence, and Clarence. Currently still on backorder are Condi, Condi, Clarence, Condi, Clarence, Condi, Condi, and Colin, whom the President has indicated he will refuse when UPS tries to deliver him.

A 145-year-old German maker of toy trains is giving its adult customers a chance to have a one-track mind.
The miniature train company Marklin is packing a condom alongside a blue freight car emblazoned with the name of Blausiegel, a German condom maker.

Marklin, a Goppingen, Germany-based company that was the first to introduce toy track with its train sets in 1891, produces trains that often carry the names of real companies to emulate actual rail cars. Collectors’ editions with less Freudian implications have been sold along with liquor advertised on the cars.

The toy freight car, which comes packaged with a "Billy Boy" condom is available in HO scale, or 1/87th of the actual size of a freight train, just under 4 inches long, and Z scale, which is 1/220th of the size of a real train.

Ralph Israel, partner of Manhattan Train & Hobby store in New York, said he sold two of the models, both to men, the first day they were put in the glass cases in his hobby shop. They are not being marketed to appear under the Christmas tree as gifts for children.

In the interest of peace and harmony as we celebrate the birth of those other people's savior (personally, I'm holding out for Blade because he's way cooler) I would like to encourage everyone to start wishing their fellow Christo-Americans a hearty "Merry Christmas."

As you can see from this post (typed in Envy Green) by James Lileks, regarding a blog post by James Wolcott, the Values-Americans are feeling unappreciated and maligned during this, their high holy days, and it up to us to let them know that we love them, we value them, and we respect their religious beliefs.

So, the next time you run into a Jesus-American, make sure you wish them a very "Merry Christmas!".

Someone left the door to the Kid's Korner open and America's Worst Mother popped in to tell a story that begs to followed by, "I guess you had to be there..." and then embarassed silence:

It was almost impossible for me to get through some parts of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes" because I kept exploding and weeping with laughter. It was even messier when I tried to read bits aloud to my husband, who had to sit there blinking impatiently and wondering when my rictus would pass. As I couldn't bear not to share my joy, I kept sputtering, "Wait, wait, you've just got to hear--" and then folding over again, unable to finish my sentence.

Naturally, I recommend it. It's not a laugh riot all the way through, but the funny bits are spectacular.

Since the election, the e-mails from readers have poured into my mailbox. The common theme from conservatives has been that Nov. 2 was a triumph of values -- embodied by the GOP heartland over the heathens of the coastal elite.

Typical of the comments was this one from Arizona: "I do think the Democrat Party is identified -- justifiably -- with much of the vulgarization so prominently displayed by many celebrities, particularly those in the entertainment industry. Hey, we pick our friends."

[...]

In this world of irony, corporate leaders at companies as diverse as News Corp., Marriott International and Time Warner can profit by selling red state consumers the very material that red state culture is supposed to despise. Those elites then funnel the proceeds to the GOP, which in turn has used the money to successfully convince red state voters that the other political party is solely responsible for the decline of the civilization.

Community Values

There was never any doubt how the good people of Utah County, Utah, would vote on Nov. 2. It has long prided itself as a bastion of conservatism and family values. And so when voters were given the opportunity to choose between President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry, 86 percent of them went for Bush, making Utah County the second most Republican county in the most Republican state in the country. Utah County has a population of roughly 370,000. Its largest employer is the Mormon-run Brigham Young University.

But Utah County is also the home of a mid-1990s court case that demonstrated some of the ambiguity about "values," even in the reddest of the red states. Randy Spencer was the attorney that the court appointed to defend a the Movie Buff video store in American Fork from local prosecutors who had charged the store's owner with 15 counts of pornography for renting tapes such as "Jugsy," "Young Buns II" and "Sex Secrets of High-Priced Call Girls." The prosecutors claimed the store was violating the community standards of suburban Provo.

Spencer, who describes himself as a devout Mormon, challenged the prosecution's definition of the community's values by subpoenaing records that showed Utah County tolerated the consumption of porn in several outlets: Utah County cable subscribers had ordered at least 20,000 explicit movies in the past two years; the Sun Coast Video store in the town of Orem was deriving 20 percent of its rental sales from adult movies, even though adult movies only made up 2 percent of the store's inventory; Dirty Jo Punsters in nearby Spanish Fork was racking up on average $111,000 dollars per year selling sex toys, blow up dolls and other adult fare; the Provo Marriott across the street from the courthouse sold 3,448 adult pay-per-view movie rentals in 1998 alone.

[...]

About a year after the Utah case, a similar scenario played out in Hamilton County, Ohio, a conservative Cincinnati suburb. In 2001, under pressure from an influential local antiporn group, Citizens for Community Values, prosecutors filed obscenity charges against two local video stores for selling adult videos. The Cincinnati Enquirer launched an investigation of community standards and found that:

"Last year, more than 21,000 Hamilton County residents purchased 26,000 explicit videos from one of the nation's largest mail-order companies. A company spokeswoman described those sales as typical for a community of this size. . . . In January of this year, 182,000 Greater Cincinnati residents -- an estimated 70,000 from Hamilton County -- visited an adult Web site at least once. Nielsen - NetRatings found that 21.8 percent of all residents here who went online visited an adult site. The national average for January was 21.4 percent. In recent months, Hamilton County residents bought adult movies on pay-per-view TV at about the same rate as viewers did in other mid-sized TV markets. The numbers suggest county residents are quiet contributors to the adult industry's rapid growth. And with every purchase, they change Hamilton County's long-held notion of a community standard."

Again, the community standard in Hamilton County -- which favored Bush over Kerry 53-47 percent -- was pretty much what it was everywhere else. In this particular case, one of the video storeowners pleaded guilty and paid a small fine. The other decided to fight and was acquitted in a jury trial.

"Jugsy"?Clarence Thomas only gave it two gavels up, citing it's lack of redeeming social values, its appeal to prurient interests...and not enough big butts.

It took an evening of Christmas shopping (or "mutually agreed upon festive binge buying" for those who hate Christians...see below) to see that somehow good taste took a holiday when some marketing scuzzball came up with the idea of merging the 'talent' of Ann Geddes (whose icky-poo cutesy photos of babies make Precious Moments figurines look like Black Mass must-haves) with creepy semi-human Celine Dion. The end result can be found on natalist coffee tables nationwide.

Posting has been a bit light lately (as if you hadn't noticed) mainly due to the holidays which always causes my stigmata to flare up.

I hate it when that happens...

(This post may now officially be linked to by any conservative blogger who may use it as just another example of the smirking elitist Blue-state hatred of Christianity. Particular attention should be paid to my use of the offensive term "holidays" which makes the Baby Jesus cry. Or Mel Gibson. I forget which.)

Looks like Red Mandate America is having second thoughts about that November purchase:

President Bush heads into his second term amid deep and growing public skepticism about the Iraq war, with a solid majority saying for the first time that the war was a mistake and most people believing that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld should lose his job, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

While a slight majority believe the Iraq war contributed to the long-term security of the United States, 70 percent of Americans think these gains have come at an "unacceptable" cost in military casualties. This led 56 percent to conclude that, given the cost, the conflict there was "not worth fighting" -- an eight-point increase from when the same question was asked this summer, and the first time a decisive majority of people have reached this conclusion.

[...]

Seven weeks since his reelection victory over Democrat John F. Kerry and four weeks before his second inauguration, the poll suggests Bush is in a paradoxical situation -- a triumphant president who remains acutely vulnerable in public opinion on a national security issue that is dominating headlines and could shadow his second term.

Even if he is "acutely vulnerable in public opinion", so what? He's got the job and he doesn't give a shit what anyone thinks. He never has. Despite the looting of the treasury, the most imcompetent Cabinet ever, and being neck-deep in a $150 billion quagmire, America tossed the car keys to the drunken fratboy for four more years and he's not giving them back until he's taken his all his pals for a power binge joyride and if he leaves a few thousand more dead servicemen in his wake, fuck'em, they should have been born rich and unaccountable.

America still has the receipt but they failed to read the fine print on the back where it says:

Hours before her arrest, Montgomery and her husband, Michael, showed off a newborn girl at a restaurant on Friday, said Kathy Sage, owner of the Whistle Stop Cafe in Melvern, a small eastern Kansas town.

Many customers were surprised to hear the infant was only a day old, Sage said. She knew an Amber Alert had been issued for a baby missing from Missouri but did not realize the infant the Montgomerys carried was connected until hearing from a reporter on Friday.

“You read about this stuff,” she said. “It blows you away when it’s here. This stuff is supposed to be in New York City or Los Angeles.”

A woman who faked being pregnant, to the point of wearing maternity clothes and holding a shower after the "birth" of her child, has been charged with murder in the death of the baby's actual mother.

Kimmi Hardy has been charged with murdering Theresa Lund and taking Lund's baby on August 28, the day Hardy told friends that she had given birth in her trailer home. Guests at a subsequent baby shower alerted police that Hardy's baby, actually 6 weeks old, seemed too old for a newborn.

According to her lawyer, a Texas woman who admits killing her baby daughter by severing the girl's arms was guided by a Biblical passage that refers to cutting off body parts to cast away sin.
Attorney David Haynes says 35-year-old Dena Schlosser, who has a history of mental illness, has been quoting Scripture where Jesus says, "If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away."

Schlosser was charged with capital murder last month after telling a 9-1-1 operator that she had cut off her baby's arms. Police found Schlosser in the living room, covered in blood, still holding a knife and listening to a hymn.

Around 10:00am on June 20, 2001, Rusty Yates received a startling phone call from his wife, Andrea, whom he had left only an hour before.

"You need to come home," she said.

Puzzled, he asked, "What's going on?"

She just repeated her statement and then added, "It's time. I did it."

Not entirely sure what she meant but in light of her recent illness, he asked her to explain and she said, "It's the children."

Now a chill shot through him. "Which one?" he asked.

"All of them."

He dropped everything and left his job as a NASA engineer at the Johnson Space Center. When he arrived fifteen minutes later, the police and ambulances were already at their Houston, Texas home on the corner of Beachcomber and Sea Lark in the Clear Lake area. Rusty was told he could not go in, so he put his forehead against a brick wall, trying to process the horrifying news, and waited.

Restless for information, he went to a window and on to the back door where he screamed, "How could you do this?" According to an article in Time, at one point Rusty Yates collapsed into a fetal position on the lawn, pounding the ground as he watched his wife being led away in handcuffs.

A bitter turn of events in the divorce of Susan and David Smith threw the young mother into a downward spiral that ended with the deaths of their children, a defense expert testified Wednesday.

Social work professor Arlene Andrews said Ms. Smith's mental condition began deteriorating in August 1994 after a failed reconciliation with her husband.

The couple agreed to seek an amiable divorce with neither party being at fault. But Ms. Smith reneged on the deal and decided to charge her husband with adultery.

He retaliated. On Oct. 20, he searched Ms. Smith's purse and found a letter from Tom Findlay. When he told her he knew she was having an affair, Ms. Smith became confused and confessed to having an affair with Findlay's father, Cary Findlay, her former boss and owner of Conso Products Co.

That's when David Smith threatened to reveal her relationship to Findlay's wife.

Andrews said Ms. Smith was distraught and didn't know where to turn.

"Susan thought she had done something unforgivable," Andrews said. "Her suicidal despair set in, and she began to think everything about her was bad."

Five days later, Michael, 3, and Alex, 14 months, were dead, having drowned in the mother's car, which Ms. Smith had let roll into John D. Long Lake.

Children are returning to Westside Middle School today for the first time since four of their classmates and one of their teachers died in an ambush. A juvenile court judge on Wednesday ordered two boys accused of the killing held until April 29, when they may be formally charged with capital murder and first-degree battery for the attack which also wounded 10 students. Counselors will be in all the classrooms to help children cope with coming back to the school.

[...]

Johnson and Golden are accused of killing four of their classmates, all girls, and an English teacher during a false fire alarm outside Westside Middle School Tuesday. Ten other people were wounded. Five students and a teacher are still in the hospital. One of the students is listed in critical condition, and doctors said her condition was improving.

Just when you thought you couldn't be any more embarrassed to be an American....

Nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim-Americans, according to a nationwide poll.

The survey conducted by Cornell University also found that Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were more apt to support curtailing Muslims’ civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.

[...]

The survey found 44 percent favored at least some restrictions on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. Forty-eight percent said liberties should not be restricted in any way.

The survey showed that 27 percent of respondents supported requiring all Muslim-Americans to register where they lived with the federal government. Twenty-two percent favored racial profiling to identify potential terrorist threats. And 29 percent thought undercover agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations to keep tabs on their activities and fund-raising.

Cornell student researchers questioned 715 people in the nationwide telephone poll conducted this fall. The margin of error was 3.6 percentage points.

I guess this is what happens when they use the Little Green Footballs phone list...

Beckham, always the critic, took exception to my leaving him to his own devices this afternoon and expressed it by eating the copy of King Leopold's Ghost that I had just started. And just to show he's not just a book hound, he also polished off copies of Rickie Lee Jones' Live at Red Rocks and Jay Farrar's Sebastopol.

Too bad about the Leopold book. I was interested in reading it since I hear that Halliburton is using it as their employee handbook.

The first order of business on Social Security, Mr. Bush told the conference, was "to convince people that there is a problem that needs to be addressed."

There were no real dissenting viewpoints from the panelists. Away from the conference, some opponents of Mr. Bush's approach, mostly liberals who want to preserve the current Social Security program, said in interviews that the administration was exaggerating the scale of the problem to create an air of crisis that justified radical but unnecessary changes like creating private investment accounts.

Whenever The Virgin Ben attempts a foray into matters regarding the fair sex, particularly when they have actually had sex, well, it's thin-ice time. Victim or not, Ben digs into his Big Bag O'Antiquated Sexual Slurs to describe the young woman who claimed she was assaulted by Kobe Bryant. As in:

But the irony of Kobe Bryant playing the jealous lover after throwing over his wife, Vanessa, for some Colorado floozy hotel girl provides hilarity all its own.

[...]

Even if he didn't rape his Colorado hotel floozy, Bryant committed adultery.

[...]

But when Kobe's Colorado vamp rape accuser complains that she didn't consent to Kobe's advances, the feminists rush forward to protect her.

"Floozy hotel girl", "hotel floozy", and "Colorado vamp". Why is she all of these (and more!) to the worldly Ben whose last contact with a real live vagina was with his mothers? Because there was evidence that she had had sex with another man previous to her run-in with Kobe, therefore she is also a trollop, a harlot, a strumpet, a roundheel, a pink pants, and a courtesan.

Of course the first woman to have sex with Ben will be a dewy virginal flower who will bestow the gift of her virtue upon Ben. Unfortunately for her, after forty-seven seconds of frenzied Shapiro-schtupping, she'll just be another common whore.

As has been noted elsewhere, Zell Miller, the mad prophet of the Republican Convention, has landed at Fox News.

Sen. Zell Miller, the fire-and-brimstone-preaching Dixiecrat who tried to challenge MSNBC's Chris Matthews to a duel after delivering the keynote speech at the Republican National Convention, has been welcomed with open arms by Fox News Channel.

The cable network announced yesterday it has signed the departing Georgia Democrat as a contributor, beginning in January.

Details were scant. Kevin Magee, FNC's vice president of programming, told The TV Column, "We will plug him in wherever we can use him."

We assume that his may be bad news for Allan Colmes who occupies the Token Democrat Chair at Fox. So we look for Colmes to be dropped from Hannity & Colmes and the show to be renamed Cheese & Cracker.

More people voted in the San Diego mayor's race for write-in candidate Donna Frye than for Mayor Dick Murphy, according to a review yesterday of disputed ballots, but it would take court action for her to be declared the winner.

At the end of a full day of ballot examination, county elections workers at a warehouse in Kearny Mesa had reviewed 4,854 ballots cast for Frye that were not included in the official results of the Nov. 2 election.

The ballots were disqualified because voters who wrote in Frye's name did not fill in a corresponding bubble, a requirement of state election law.

[...]

Murphy brushed off the disputed ballots yesterday as "illegal votes" and reminded the public that his election victory had been certified.

"To me, it's clear that I am the legitimate mayor," Murphy said at a City Hall news conference. "I got the most legal votes. That's the way it works in America."

...except:

Voters who put an 'x' in the bubble for Murphy had their votes counted even though the law states that the bubble must be filled in. Murphy who has been a below-par mayor (in a city that has grown famous for them...don't even get me started on Susan Golding) is in danger of becoming a lame duck local joke. Supporters for Murphy state that a voter who wrote Donna Frye's name on the ballot but didn't fill in the bubble may not have wanted to vote for her, but wanted to see what her name looked like on the ballot with Murphy's and Ron Roberts'.

No. Really. They actually say things like that.

Disclaimer: I know Donna Frye. We worked together to keep a group of dog owners from taking over a portion of Kate Session's in Pacific Beachpark for a fenced-in dog park, therefore I more than a little biased in her favor.

In Chicago I went to several bookstores to see if I could find it. Borders was the first. They’ve decided that the book belongs in the Home Decorating section instead of the humor ghetto. I found four copies and took them down to the desk at 11:30 PM and asked a clerk if I could put them in the big humor display on the ground floor; the clerk nearly wet himself. I – don’t – know! I don’t have the authority! He looked around with the expression of Peter Lorre cornered in an alley, and I pressed the point. C’mon! There’s a big gaping hole in the humor display. And it’s a new book. You’ll sell ‘em all, I promise. He gave in. Thanks! I said, and I bought a book just to show we were pals.

Downtown at the Michigan Avenue Borders I took advantage of the crowds and moved the book without asking anyone. No one noticed, since the store had the human density of a Soylent Green distribution center. It was worse across the street; millions were streaming in and out of Water Tower Place, which gave me both claustrophobia and agoraphobia, these twin familiar terrors compounded by the idiotic din of some drummers who had set up on the corner for the express purpose of deafening everyone. I shopped for a few hours, resisted the desire to see if the repositioned books had sold, then went back to the hotel.

Later the clerk, unnerved by the strange man with the funny Minnesota accent and Star-Trekian large forehead hid some of the copies in the storeroom to make the stranger feel better...and maybe not return and annoy the paying customers who just wanted to buy the Jenna Jameson book and leave without being leered at:

But before I blew out my voice I went to the Barnes and Noble across the street from the hotel. Humor ghetto: no book. Home decorating section: no book. Damn. A clerk noted my crestfallen aspect, and asked if he could help; I told him what I was looking for, and he guided me to a table – a table! Where the book was on display. It was surrounded by tottering stacks of other new books. Only three copies left.

“It’s been selling really well,” he said. “People have really been saying they like it. And they say it’s a lot like this other book, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, ‘The Gallery of Regrettable Food.’”

Oh, it does not get any better than that. Except maybe it does: I went back the next day. All the copies were gone.

He actually believed me when I finally told him it was my book, too. I think.

Yes. Because simultaneous eye-rolling and smirking is the international sign of agreement.

Trumpeting America as liberator, the White House conferred the highest civilian honor yesterday on three men intimately involved with the decision to invade Iraq or the troubled aftermath of the invasion.

President Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Tommy Franks, the now-retired Army general who led the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq; former CIA director George Tenet, who told Bush it was a "slam dunk" that Iraq still had weapons of mass destruction; and L. Paul Bremer, who presided over the first 14 months of Iraq reconstruction.

The big difference was, that Mother Teresa, Mr. Rogers, Rosa Parks and Pope John Paul II didn't show up to accept their awards by piling out of a tiny car and hitting each other with pies.

Credit writer Ann Gerhart for harshing their mellow:

"My hunch is that George Bush wasn't using the same standard when honoring Tenet and Bremer that was applied to previous honorees," said David Wade, a spokesman for Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who lost last month's presidential election to Bush. And Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, said yesterday he "would have reached a different conclusion" on Tenet. "I don't think [he] served the president or the nation well," Levin said.

The president heralded Tenet for being "one of the first to recognize" the growing threat to America from "radical terrorist networks." He made no mention of the failures outlined by the 9/11 commission that forced the administration to overhaul the nation's intelligence operations.

He praised Franks for his Iraq war plan, which utilized "a force half the size of the force that won the Gulf War" to reach Baghdad in less than a month, "the fastest, longest armored advance in the history of American warfare." Bush did not note that more Americans have died after the toppling of Saddam Hussein than during that initial charge.

Bremer, Bush said, "worked day and night in difficult dangerous conditions" to rebuild Iraq and help leaders chart the country's political future. "Every benchmark . . . was achieved on time or ahead of schedule, including the transfer of sovereignty that ended his tenure," the president said. He did not add that the transfer was hurriedly arranged two days early because of fears insurgents would attack the ceremonies.

[...]

In Iraq yesterday, U.S. military officials announced combat deaths of two Marines, bringing the toll to 10 Marines in three days. A suicide bomber blew up seven people and wounded at least 13 at a Green Zone checkpoint in Baghdad. Military brass announced that the U.S. military would have a record high of 150,000 troops on the ground in the nation through the Jan. 30 election and "a little bit after." In Mosul, gunmen killed a provincial council member, and soldiers discovered eight more bodies of Iraqis, bringing to more than 150 the number of likely victims of insurgents targeting Iraqi police and security forces in that city in the past six weeks.

Sure, he wasn't having multiple affairs while consorting with his mob friends and living large, but George Bush offered him a job anyway:

Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman has twice in recent days said "no" when approached about the possibility of a major job in the second Bush administration, CNN has learned.

The Cabinet vacancy at the Department of Homeland Security was the subject of the latest overture, according to congressional and other government sources. Those sources said the earlier overture was to see whether Lieberman might be interested in becoming the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Thus President Bush was foiled in his attempt to further diversify his Cabinet by adding an invertebrate.

Okay. It's not this Barbara Bush (your testicles may now resume their former position) it was this Barbara Bush (aka NotJenna):

Did young Barbara Bush get her noggin conked at the White House Christmas party Saturday night?

Guests are saying that the more serious of President Bush's twins was dancing with a friend when he dipped her down low - very low - and she slipped, hitting her head on the highly waxed marble floor. Sources add that a doctor checked her inside the White House, and she is fine.

Gordon Johndroe, a spokeswoman for First Lady Laura Bush, denied a rumor that Barbara suffered a concussion.

"I do not believe that is accurate. She has no concussion that I am aware of. It was a private party, I'm not going to say who she was dancing with."

So what's up with this Peterson guy? Did he , like, break the law or something?

One of the benefits of never watching cable news (or network news for that matter) is that I was way underinformed about the Peterson trial. I do know that he allegedly killed his wife and unborn child, that he allegedly dumped their bodies from a boat, and that he allegedly sold fertilizer.

Oh. One thing I do know for a fact: he graduated from the same high school that my daughter goes to. They're tearing the school down after this year...not that Scott has anything to do with that.

I'll go for the awards banquet but I refuse to do the past winner's kickline

You probably already know this, but the Koufax Awards are open for nominations. They start here...and continue here.

Remember...the Koufax Awards are considerably more aboveboard than the Whizbang Awards, or whatever the hell they call them, as well as being much more legitimate than the Heisman Trophy which still hasn't recovered from the Gino Toretta debacle.

Somewhere John Ashcroft is giggling, which is probably some kind of sin...

Alberto Gonzalez snatches the yellow jersey from Condi Rice if the Tour de Incompetent:

Kerik, who withdrew his own nomination Friday and apologized yesterday for embarrassing Bush, was asked numerous times by White House lawyers if he had employed an illegal immigrant or failed to pay taxes on domestic help, the sources said.

Kerik was told he would humiliate his family, himself and the president if he lied on either account, the officials said. He responded with firm denials. After digging deeper, however, Kerik said he discovered last week that he might have a problem on both accounts and withdrew his name.

In the vetting process, which was conducted by the office of White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, Kerik also never mentioned that a New Jersey judge had issued a warrant for his arrest in 1998 over a civil dispute over unpaid bills, the sources said. The existence of the dispute was first reported by Newsweek Friday night.

It is unclear why White House lawyers could not uncover a warrant that Newsweek discovered after a few days of research, although some are blaming Bush's insistence on speed and secrecy for failing to catch this and other potential red flags in Kerik's background.

"It has also been brought to my attention that for a period of time during such employment required tax payments and related filings had not been made."

Funny how easily "personal responsibility" conservatives will lapse into that good old 'passive voice'... remember Reagan's Iran-Contra admission that "mistakes were made"?

In the future, when historians laud the Bu**sh** administration as the crookedest collection of cocksuckers since the adminstration of Ulysses S. Grant, perhaps conservatives will reluctantly admit that "cocks were sucked".

Doug Giles, who offers the words of the Lord in the Royal Palm Ballroom at the Residence Inn, Aventura Florida Sundays at 10:30, has some advice for being a manly man and not the kind of pussy who goes to college to get a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree.

I hate to get your panties in a wad, you pomosexual gender-line-blurrers , you, but the vast, vast majority of American men want to be more like William Wallace and less like Will and Grace.

From the thousands of positive emails I receive week after week from men and women regarding my polemic attempts in print, radio and TV to re-inject, guard and perpetuate the testosterone attitude … it seems that the general populace isn’t queuing up for a radical dose of 21st century misandry.

As you can see from the highlighted words, someone got a gift certificate to the Dictionary Store and blew the whole thing in one trip to the mall (after a quick stop for Dippin' Dots, of course). But, back to Doug:

Last week’s column addressed the good and natural competitive streak with which men come out of momma’s womb, and now I’ll turn my guns to points two and three: Independence and Responsibility.

The second classic characteristic men will naturally exhibit, that is, if they escape the aggressive societal softening of the metrosexual emasculators, is … independence.

Traditionally, men have prized their autonomy more than Clay Aiken does his gale-force-wind-proof hair gel and his chartreuse neckerchief....

But come on, America … somehow we have developed today a race of Nancy-boys, absolute caricatures of the classic male imago, who have extended their mommy’s breast feeding, culture’s coddling and government’s hand holding into their 30’s and beyond!

At the hub of man’s constituent make up is the natural and spiritual resistance to hanging on to any mortal or institution too long for subsistence. By natural command, man is to be independent and is hard wired to go and get a life apart from the nurturing and supportive arms of anyone … and that includes the government.

...and Jesus. Oh wait, maybe not Him, even though He provides a phoney-baloney job preaching to the mooks in the ballroom between restocking the mini-bars and putting out the muffins for the seniors brunch.

Whoops. Sorry. Doug is still talking:

Traditionally, young men fled from getting in touch with their supposed “feminine side” and instead they tapped into the gritty and grubby competitive “real world” where you thrive or die. (By the way … if I want to get in touch with my feminine side … I’ll grab my wife.)

Once the restraining order lapses.

Unfortunately, in the home, in the church, and with our government … thanks to the societal deconstructionists, we have created an extended womb with an umbilical cord of enormous proportions that can sucker and baby men all the way up until their mid-life crises. Historically, this co-dependent wet womb which is presently afforded chronologically mature males past adolescence has utterly weakened whatever society in which it has been allowed to fester.

You see, this is what happens when poor writing skills and bad imagery have a baby and they name it Clashpoint. Speaking of which:

My ClashPoint is this: if concerned conservatives want to improve our nation, then we have got to resist the current culture of man hatred, wherever and whenever we find it, whether that means not going to movies with an emasculating message, or shouting “that’s bull**t” when we hear and see this stuff on TV or in the classroom, or, more positively, developing old school ways of creating environments conducive to raising warriors and wild men. Whatever peaceful form this resistance takes … it is a must that we verbally wail our disapproval of this incessant dissing of men.

One great way to do this is by buying these killer books:
· Future Men by Douglas Wilson
· The Church Impotent by Leon Podles
· Raising a Modern Day Knight by Robert Lewis
· The Code of Man by Waller Newell

Now maybe it's just me, but shouldn't "warriors and wild men" be unafraid of spelling out "bullshit"? And is there some other way to wail (which seems kinda womanly when you think about it) other than verbally? And doesn't Doug know that, outside of thirteen year-old girls, nobody uses "dissing" anymore.

My TBoggpoint is this: Doug's cure for stopping the emasculation of men comes down to:

A) Stop going to the movies
B) Talking back to the TV
and
C) Reading books.

With two Ugandans, you get a Ginzu knife, so act now.
Our operators are standing by.

Well now we know why America's Worst Mother took last week off. For those who have observed the hilarious hijinks of Meghan, Mr. Meghan, as well as the little Gurdlings (Crustacea, Hazel Tov, Lienterry, and Bong) we have always marveled at their ability to live in a house that is continually falling down around their noggins. Doors that stick, doorbells that don't work, faulty wiring, overflowing toilets (also known as the "lavatory" if one wants to appear tres chic, plumbing-wise), and now power outages and dying computers.

First there is panic, and a whacking noise as someone bangs the keys and they availeth not. Then comes disbelief and repeated cries of, "this is ridiculous," and "I don't believe it," and "oh, man, what am I going to do?" A short period of grieving follows, as you reflect on all the unanswered e-mails and unfinished proposals for articles and bestselling trilogies that died with the hard drive, and then — O bliss! — comes acceptance and liberation. The reproachful e-mails have vanished into the ether; long passages of hard-won, too-clever prose have vaporized, and you are free! You can be born again in Version 10.3.6!

Meanwhile, it is the fourth week in November and however much the Macintosh people would like to set up a new computer for you, Mrs. Gurdon, it's a busy time of year and, well, would late next week be all right?

It is. As a result, Thanksgiving weekend is wonderfully quiet. The streets are deserted, and when we come in from bracing outdoor walks, not once do we find a phone message that needs returning. With no e-mails, there's no temptation to crouch before the glowing screen, surfing aimlessly. In fact, the hum of technology is so markedly absent that for a few days we return to a kind of pre-industrial agrarian existence, inasmuch as such a thing is possible in an urban townhouse. Out come the board games.

Yes, nothing quite brings the family together like huddling around the table in the soot-blackened kitchen playing Risk (where the object is to invade countries, kill their leaders, and convert their gamepieces to Christianity) by kerosene light. But lest we think that the Gurdon's have gone completely native we learn that prior to the shutdown of all of the twentieth century's amenities, Meghan and the kids apparently were watching the Home Shopping Channel and impulsively bought themselves their own African (from Sally Struthers we imagine).

"I am thankful for blueberries," Phoebe remarks as she digs her fork into a slice of pumpkin pie.

Yes, Lawrence, whom Meghan will later rename Bok Choi, is in the midst of getting a good Christian education in Uganda courtesy of the Gurdons, where he will learn that, if he does get to come to America, he will live a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care as long as the woodpile is kept stocked, he fixes the computer, and he doesn't look Crustacea in the eye.

But wait! Did the Gurdon's do their due diligence regarding Lawrence with the same care a certain President did when he picked a certain bullet-headed former cop to make sure that no foreigners get into our country unless they have really really good nanny skills?

Paris takes a swipe at her, and then turns to me, worried. "I was going to ask you something about him."

The phone rings, and my husband goes out of the room to get it.

"Please may I have more pie?"

"First finish the — "

"Oh, yes!" Paris remembers. "Is Lawrence a Democrat?"

"Paris, how can it — " I begin, dismayed, thinking that now it really has gone too far, this partisanship that surrounds us, that an eight-year-old boy would want to know the politics of a boy living in Kampala. How can it matter, why would he ask such a thing? Then it occurs to me that I don't actually know.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because if he is," Paris says cheerfully, pulling out of his pocket an Altoids box decorated with a kicking donkey which someone gave my husband at the Democratic convention, "he might like this as a present!"

"You," I say with relief, grabbing my son and giving him a squeeze, "are a fantastic boy."

Because nothing says "I care about you, my little African friend", like a used mint tin. Maybe Lawrence can use it as luggage when he comes to America. Providing Michelle Malkin lets him in....

Next week: Lawrence is traded for Esperanza in Columbia and a preschooler to be named later.

What should we do with US classics like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or The Color Purple? "Dig a hole," Gerald Allen recommends, "and dump them in it." Don't laugh. Gerald Allen's book-burying opinions are not a joke.

Earlier this week, Allen got a call from Washington. He will be meeting with President Bush on Monday. I asked him if this was his first invitation to the White House. "Oh no," he laughs. "It's my fifth meeting with Mr Bush."

Bush is interested in Allen's opinions because Allen is an elected Republican representative in the Alabama state legislature. He is Bush's base. Last week, Bush's base introduced a bill that would ban the use of state funds to purchase any books or other materials that "promote homosexuality". Allen does not want taxpayers' money to support "positive depictions of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle". That's why Tennessee Williams and Alice Walker have got to go.

Kevin over at Political Animal asked a bunch of policy wonks, real serious thinkers, and other social maladroits to come up with lists of serious non-fiction books for the holidays. So, naturally, he didn't ask me.

Not that that stopped me from coming up with a list anyway.

For your Kwanzaa shopping pleasure:

Long before he became a drug addict selling his body in the alleys behind independent film houses showing Deliverance, Rush Limbaugh gave his stamp of approval to Bob Cobb's Dittohead Bartender's Guide featuring drinks such as One Bourbon, One Scotch, and Three Divorces or the ever popular Purple Pilonidal Punch. Make sure to have a copy around the house for the upcoming holidays because you never know when Jenna and NotJenna may stop by.

They were handing this out at the Republican Convention and it must be pretty good because the cover caused over 80% of the male delegates to, um, you know, "launch a preemptive attack on the interior of their tighty-whities" (if you know what I mean). It also makes a great gift for the postgraduate college student on your list even if he isn't a Christian and doesn't believe that Jesus is his Lord and Savior.

If you're like me (and you are in many more ways than you want to admit) you hate it when you go into a bookstore and some non-employee has moved books that they don't approve of into the wrong section so people can't find them. The book industry refers to this as "maglalanging" which results in lost sales and peevish employees who would really rather be at home working on their angst-filled bildungsroman instead of explaining to some yokel that they can't buy volume seven of the Left Behind series (The Rapture: The Royalty Check Has Cleared) with food stamps . One perpetrator of "maglalanging" is this crazy lady who keeps going into Borders, Barnes & Noble, and your finer independent bookstores across the country and shifting Born Free and Equal into the fiction section, which is a shame because Ansel Adams' photos are really quite moving.

Finally, it won't be available until after Christmas and it is fiction, but Sam Francis is finishing up his retelling of To Kill A Mockingbird. With a working title of Tom Robinson Had It Coming you can look for it in the lobby when the Hannitization tour hits a sleepy backwater podunk town near you.

We've always wondered why the Corner Kids at National Review Online felt free to go on and on about dogs, Simpson's episodes, Duran Duran, and the Derb's battle with erectile dysfunction. Now we know why. Apparently they're only there serving out their community service time instead of getting paid. According to Jim Boulet they don't do it for the money honey, it's only for some of that hot conservative lovin':

Kuhn complains that we pajamahadeen have "no code of ethics, or even an employer, to enforce any standard." But help is coming: "Beginning next year, the F.E.C. will institute new rules on the restricted uses of the Internet as it relates to political speech."

Time for the blogosphere to fight back, given that, unlike, say, CBS and FOX., the pajamahadeen also tend to lack attorneys on retainer to defend our First Amendment rights. I have no desire to see NRO's Kathryn Lopez in the defendant's chair because an article in NRO criticized some politician three months before an election. Neither should the Bush Administration.

You see just because they write for NRO doesn't mean that they're actually NRO employees entitled to representation by NRO corporate counsel (who nervously eye the phone every night anticipating yet another call from Jonah Goldberg looking for bail money...again). So, when we criticize Kathryn Jean Lopez, we should be sensitive to the fact that she's only a volunteer and nothing more. Kind of like a Candy Stripe nurse, but without the handjobs.

Unless, of course, you're Rich Lowry and in need of some of that "Special K lip n' grip"...

Congratulations to the little Eddie Eagles aged six to eighteen for their winning entries in the NRA's Paint the Animal and Then Kill It contest. Winning entries can be found here. One would be hard pressed to describe a child's joy at choosing one of God's creatures to immortalize in paint, pastels, or pen & ink before drawing a bead on it and putting a 162 grain boattail bullet through it's lungs at 115 yards.

Memories to last a lifetime....

Added: I'm not so much anti-hunting as much as I am anti-child labor to provide whacking material for Wayne LaPierre

Such history, which seemed ancient only months ago, has gained in urgency since Election Day. As politicians and the media alike pander to that supposed 22 percent of "moral values" voters, we're back where we came in. Bill Condon, who wrote and directed "Kinsey," started working on this project in 1999 and didn't gear it to any political climate. The film is a straightforward telling of its subject's story, his thorniness and bisexuality included, conforming in broad outline to the facts as laid out by Kinsey's most recent biographers. But not unlike Philip Roth's "Plot Against America," which transports us back to an American era overlapping that of "Kinsey," this movie, however unintentionally, taps into anxieties that feel entirely contemporary. That Channel 13 would even fleetingly balk at "Kinsey" as The Times long ago did at the actual Kinsey is not a coincidence.

As for the right-wing groups that have targeted the movie (with or without seeing it), they are the usual suspects, many of them determined to recycle false accusations that Kinsey was a pedophile, as if that might somehow make the actual pedophilia scandal in one church go away. But this crowd doesn't just want what's left of Kinsey's scalp. (He died in 1956.) Empowered by that Election Day "moral values" poll result, it is pressing for a whole host of second-term gifts from the Bush administration: further rollbacks of stem-cell research, gay civil rights, pulchritude sightings at N.F.L. games and, dare I say it aloud, reproductive rights for women. "If you have weaklings around you who do not share your biblical values, shed yourself of them," wrote Bob Jones III, president of the eponymous South Carolina university, to President Bush after the election. "Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil."

Today campus leftism is not merely prevalent. It is radical, aggressive, and deeply intolerant, as another newly minted graduate of another prominent university -- Ben Shapiro of UCLA -- shows in "Brainwashed," a recent bestseller. "Under higher education's facade of objectivity," Shapiro writes, "lies a grave and overpowering bias" -- a charge he backs up with example after freakish example of academics going to ideological extremes.

Not so fast there, Sparky:

Ben has a bit of a reputation back at UCLA of being faster and looser with the truth than he was with the ladies:

A book a UCLA undergraduate wrote that alleges students are "brainwashed" by a liberal bias at U.S. universities contains numerous factual errors, misquotations and misrepresentations of people's views.

With "Brainwashed," Shapiro said he hopes to drive home the assertion he's frequently made: that the United States' universities are dominated by liberal professors whose ideologies overshadow those of their underrepresented conservative counterparts.

While Shapiro's inflammatory statements have drawn criticism from many, different concerns arise when he doesn't get his facts straight.

At least twice, Shapiro states that Student Media receives funding from mandatory tuition or fees, which is false. He also misquotes prominent UCLA figures, including the chancellor and UCLA Hillel Director Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, and mischaracterizes the terms of his dismissal from the Daily Bruin.

Ben responded to the scurrilous accusations from The Daily Bruin in exactly the same way that he has confronted the threat of Islamofascism...by running away:

Shapiro rescheduled Monday an in-person meeting that was supposed to take place that morning and asked to be interviewed by phone instead. Shapiro canceled the phone interview after being presented with the errors through e-mail and would only comment in a statement by e-mail.

"I stand behind the facts in my book, and behind the major point of my book: The overwhelming majority of professors are leftists, and their leftism enters the classroom," he wrote.

After canceling his interview, he did not return calls and messages left to his home and cell phone but responded in a later e-mail that he would not be able to talk for "the next several weeks."

He wrote that he is busy with the publicity campaign for his book, which in an interview last week he said would launch today.

When asked about factual errors, a spokeswoman familiar with Shapiro's book declined to comment before speaking with a legal team.

Maybe we should send this along to Jacoby since he couldn't be bothered to check out his lead source.

You know, in a strictly non-harassing manner, because Jeff seems kinda overly sensitive and stuff. Don't even get him started on 'fire'...

Challenger said a weak labor market could hurt the crucial holiday shopping season.

"The biggest worry for the economy is that the large number of lower-middle-class and middle-class Americans struggling to make it paycheck to paycheck will be short of discretionary income during the holiday shopping season," he said.

Happy Holidays to all of you Americans who put fear, war, and 'values' on your Christmas wish list. Here's your lump of coal.